ONE-WAY TICKET TO AMERICA–A ROMANIAN JOURNALIST’S STORY OF LOVE, SURVIVAL, AND IMMIGRATION

ONE-WAY TICKET TO AMERICA–A ROMANIAN JOURNALIST’S STORY OF LOVE, SURVIVAL, AND IMMIGRATION offers unique insight into the female immigrant experience in America: the small cruelties, the unexpected kindnesses, the many obstacles, and the occasional victories. From big-city Romania to small-town New England, this memoir explores what it means to leave the life you know behind—and what it takes to create a new one in the face of overwhelming odds.

Before I moved to the United States, I was well on my way to an illustrious career in journalism in Romania. At thirty-three, I had a published book, a TV show, and a number of investigative print pieces to my name, and my star was still rising. Then I met Lyman Dezotell in Romania— an American man with a wide smile and a huge heart, the sole father of five girls. He came to visit Romania, but I gave up everything to marry him and move to America.

In Bucharest, I was a successful career woman with my own apartment and a tight circle of loved ones; in Coventry, Vermont, I was disconnected, with a limited grasp of English and only Lyman to lean on. Then, just months after the move, Lyman died in a freak accident on his way to work, leaving me penniless and pregnant with our child. With a plane ticket in my pocket, and the unexpected tragedy, I had to make a choice: leave the country or stay and find a way to survive on my own.

I am a former writer for the newspaper the National Daily in Bucharest, Romania. I am recognized as one of the country’s best post-revolution reporters; some of my press campaigns are now taught in courses at the University of Journalism in Romania. In 2001 I moved to Vermont, where I worked as a science teacher (the 2014 Vermont Outstanding Science Teacher of the Year) and am the co-editor of a Romanian language magazine, New York Magazin.

“Dana Dezotell’s memoir Pasiflora drops you into a world you will never forget, from a magical childhood in Romania to a love story that unfolds in America.”

— Linda Joy Myers, PhD, President, National Association of Memoir Writers, and author of Don’t Call Me Mother and The Power of Memoir

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